


Kyubey

by aparticularbandit



Series: Character Sketches [5]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 21:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit





	Kyubey

               Sometimes all it saw were bright flashes in the dead of night.  The problem was that it could see everything: stars dying across the universe – that was one flash; the death of a magical girl, another; the birth of one star, yet another flash; and the birth of a witch the brightest of all.  A witch, as a result of the second, forgave the first and caused the third.

               And then there were all the other species throughout the universe with whom they were contracting, the different colors associated with that – and sometimes not even conceptual colors – until everything just became either dark and black or pure light and full of color.  Death and life, and often the two combined because it wouldn’t have quite understood how dark the darkness was without seeing how bright the light could often be.

               The blonde girl it was currently watching was a mix.  Right now, unlike normal, her soul held a fiendishly dark taint, which, to it, seemed brighter and more hopeful.  Enough darkness there would bring an explosion of depressive light, the same sort of explosion that the girl she was fighting – she might be a witch now, but it always saw the girl – had only a few hours earlier gone through.  The transformation looked painful, the dark soul breaking her fragile bonds and corrupting them, the girl’s puppet changing form to match the soul.

               It’d been waiting almost two years for Mami’s soul to ignite.

               The yellow girl standing before it now aimed guns nearly twice her size – not Tiro Finale; she only used that when she was showing off – at the spiral-shaped familiar blobs in front of her before finally destroying their squid-like leader.  She brushed a few stray hairs out of her face while she transformed back into her school uniform, casually picking up the broken soul; cleaning the depression, weight, despair of her own with it; and then placing it neatly in a hidden pocket somewhere on her person.

               Unfortunately for Kyubey, she was no nearer becoming a witch than she had been when she first contracted so long ago.  If anything, she was further from it.  But perhaps tonight could change all that.

               The white alien puppet – similar to the body of a magical girl, its real essence was somewhere else – continued to watch as she sighed, a gesture which meant very little to it.  It only knew that the girl liked to keep it around often – for company, or so it had heard.  After millennia of watching these humans, it still couldn’t understand why humans so craved each other and so desperately avoided spending mass quantities of their time alone.  It had certainly never seen or known another of its kind.  Was that sort of association really all that fulfilling?

               For all it’d seen, and for all its thoughts, this did not seem to be the case, at least not for the magical girl still working beneath it.  She’d been both at her strongest, and at her weakest, when training the red-haired girl now residing in the next city over.  _Kyoko_ , it reminded itself.  After a while, the humans all looked the same to it, just mounds of flesh and scatterings of potential with the most uninventive, illogical labels.  “Kyoko”, for one.  Even worse – “Mami”.  There were humans on the other – small ones – who labeled their mothers that in a generic fashion.  So why make it a specific label?

               But the Incubator wasn’t here to judge, just to harvest.  Its girls would just be so much harder to handle if it forgot their names.  They liked to think it was their friend, some sort of floppy-eared companion or mascot, and it’d done nothing to dissuade them.  Let them believe what they want while they’re still alive.  Their actions would only draw more girls in.

               It watched through dark pink eyes as the yellow girl began to walk down the street, bright soul held in the palm of her hand.  Her light remained steady, not pulsing as she did when a witch was near.  It could tell she was going to stop soon, just as it felt bright pink flashes a few miles to the right, in the opposite direction.  The pink girl with the fluffy dress would probably die soon if it didn’t send help, and a dead magical girl would be unable to be used to save the universe.  She needed to die as a full-grown witch, not a half-baked kid.

               And perhaps if she became friends with Mami, she could drag her down with her death just as Kyoko once had with her overwhelming depression and betrayal.

               It dashed after the yellow-haired girl so as to appear out of breath.  The illusion of its hurry would make her hurry, thinking the other girl would be on the end of her rope.  She wasn’t, but this would cause the desired result, it knew that much.

               “Mami!”

               The yellow girl stopped at the sound of her name.  She opened her mouth to speak, but the Incubator stopped in front of her, panting.  “Witch…near the train station.  There’s another magical girl out there!”

               Now, to most of its slaves, this would mean nothing.  Kyoko, for instance, might have ignored it – or fought the girl encroaching on her territory.  Mami, on the other hand, would hear its words, see its panic, and automatically assume there was something wrong, even though it had said nothing of the sort.  It watched as the girl’s eyes grew wide.  She raced off, not caring if it followed her or not.  Kyubey chose to give chase, carrying the illusion brought about by its carefully chosen words and actions.  That, and it probably wouldn’t be too bad to be there, even if it could see the fight without actually being present.

               The pink flashes were growing fainter until the glowing golden light appeared.  With one fell swoop, the childlike crayon witch died.  The golden light approached the pink one, and with the tap of a swirling dark seed, purified the dark absences in her soul.  The lights grew brighter.

               The Incubator let the girls do their talking, only barely listening.  Their conversation was of no use to it, unless one of them were to ask it a question.  It would be far better to fade out of their sights, now that the yellow puppet gestured to it with a smile.  It wasn’t needed here anymore.

               The endless battle between light and dark – and the two mixtures, the gray, dim areas – continued on, and the Incubator watched for the opportunity to turn the balance in the universe’s favor.


End file.
